Lord Two’s venomous techniques blasted across the battlefield, chewing through swathes of soldiers—both Aerdian riders and Dominion footmen—uncaringly. The venom ate away their skin and shrivelled their bodies in their armour, reducing them to heaps of black dust in a few painful seconds.

  Myraden ducked and dodged, and whenever she could, dispersed a venom technique with an arc of crimson Essence. She and Kythen attacked in unison, slicing with spear strikes or slashing side-to-side with a whirling, guided rope-dart.

  Her own techniques blasted out into the surrounding armies, but they weren’t nearly as destructive. And, though she tried not to hit any Aerdians, she wasn’t exactly focussing on her surroundings.

  She was trying to stay alive.

  As a peak Blaze, Lord Two couldn’t kill her instantly, but she was always on the back foot, blocking swipes of his chain scythe. Kythen kicked and charged, but it only occupied Lord Two for a few seconds—enough for Myraden to recover, but never enough for her to gain the upper hand.

  She punched and kicked, thrashing, forcing, doing whatever she could to live and keep herself standing. Her conscious mind faded, and she relied on old wisdom and her training with a spear, on her raw instinct and nothing more, to carry her through from second to second.

  Her lungs heaved, enhanced body or not, and everything screamed in pain. She’d protected her head—old training kicking in—but venom had burnt away the skin on her left arm, and sometimes, the flesh down to her bone. Her armour yellowed from blocking a direct bolt of venom Essence, but it’d protected her lungs and heart. A deep gash along her side stained her waist cape and pants red, and the multitude of minor scrapes and slices were beginning to add up.

  She just wanted to lay down and sleep.

  But then she’d die.

  We need a plan! Kythen warned. We can’t keep going like this!

  Myraden had thought many times about how she would defeat Lord Two. All her plans hinged on matching the strength of his techniques, of imbuing her Essence with Essentia and setting her soul aflame.

  Lord Two was fast. He could blink in and out of existence, seemingly, in a puff of flower petals, and appear where he chose.

  But it had a weakness. It wasn’t teleportation; when he’d fought the Hand, he’d never passed through physical objects. He might not have realized, but she noticed. She kept that to herself.

  She needed to be faster if she was going to capitalize on it, anyway.

  Then think about your advancement! Kythen urged, prancing away from a barrage of venom blasts. You need that—

  Before Kythen could finish, Lord Two flashed through the air, but Myraden’s hazy mind hadn’t picked up on his angle of departure. He appeared before her in a flash. Instead of just in front, poised for a blow, like she’d been expecting, he appeared just to her left. His veins flared bright purple, and he swung his chain-scythe faster and harder than she been expecting.

  First came the miniature scythe blade, glistening with Reign. A scythe cleaved, it cut down, and it killed—its Reign only worked when the user was poised for a killing blow.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t dodge.

  Pushing her Tundra Veins to the very limit, she forced them down into her feet and sprang back.

  Instead of cleaving her in half, the chain scythe slashed upward across her gut, leaving a deep gouge. Had it not been for her enhanced body, her innards would’ve spilled out, but with a shout of exertion, she held herself together and used Essence to maintain her form. Drawing on the pain, fear, and rage helped.

  But the chain scythe’s counterweight flew around behind the strike. It caught her in the chest, denting her armour and cracking a rib beneath, before flinging her off her feet and launching her into the ridge of dirt at the edge of their isolated crater.

  A plume of dirt and dust and snow rose up in front of her and washed overhead, and every inch of her body screamed out in pain.

  It wanted to fade away and forget everything, to just abandon this unforgiving life and see what lay beyond. Her head whirled, her vision dimmed, and a gold sheen washed over everything.

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  The Eane. She was dying, and her soul wanted to return.

  But…there was still so much to do. So many people to save, so many pointless deaths, so many children who’d grow up without fathers…

  She was supposed to put an end to that.

  Writhing and gasping, she tried to cling to life. Tears brimmed on the edge of her eyes, and she shouted.

  Lord Two approached. He knocked Kythen aside with a cruel backhand, then struck him with a pulse of venom that ate away the fur and skin of his hindleg. Spinning his chain-scythe lazily beside him, he said, “Weak, but an exemplary specimen of a northern sprite. If you’ve proven anything, it’s that we were right to purge your kind.”

  She took a laboured breath and tried to retort, but nothing came out.

  Save it! Kythen snapped. You have one chance. You need to advance. Now.

  She could see the Eane. It was right there, clinging to everything, giving her binding in the world.

  It clung to her, too, grounding her and holding her in place, determining her every movement. A mesh that controlled all matter…if she could just accept it into herself, to understand her purpose, and to bend the mesh around her own purpose.

  Who she was. A spear stabbed. A scythe cleaved and killed.

  But she wasn’t just a weapon.

  “I survive,” she whispered. “I will not be broken.”

  Strands, streams, of golden light writhed along the ground. Each thread was an individual slice of the Eane, and she just needed one.

  She inhaled, and instead of just pulling in aura, she drew in a clump of threads. She was closer to the Eane, and this was her Path.

  ~ ~ ~

  Pirin pushed the threads of golden Eane down to his gut. They poured into his channels and swirled through every one of them, until they reached his core.

  He didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do, but it just felt right. He wrapped the strands around his core like he was tying up a stack of logs, and they began to shift and spin. He could manipulate these strands of Eane with his will, just like he could move Essence and Essentia.

  His eyes blasted open, and gold light poured out from them. This time, he sensed it. It was like when he first formed his Reyad, only ten times as powerful.

  And nowhere near as crippling. He stayed upright, standing strong. It was like he was at the bottom of a well, and his presence alone had warped reality to fit him. To flow toward him. Stones ripped off the ground of the plaza, plaster ripped off the walls of the surrounding houses. Splinters flew off boards and circled him in a cyclone, like he was a massive wraith.

  But it only affected a small range. Beyond that, wind and force and pressure pushed away, keeping even Lord Three back as he tried to advance. He repeated his revelation over and over in his head, I rise, I rise, I rise.

  But that wouldn’t be enough. Not alone.

  He had to set his core aflame.

  He’d build up the bonfire, and now it was time to use it. He shifted the golden strands of Eane back and forth, like he was creating friction. The edges of his core bent and shuddered, as if they were about to break—or worse, smash through his body and plummet to the floor.

  But his Foundation Timbers held it in place. The golden cord of the Eane slid back and forth, and the ember-y, glowing material of his core glowed. Heat spread away from it in veins, until finally, the entire core burst into flame.

  It was blue flame. It was pure Essence right now, but if he put his mask back on, it’d probably be a greenish-brown gnatsnapper Essence.

  It radiated heat and strength throughout his entire body, converting unprecedented amounts of Essence into Essentia.

  But now, the transformation was out of his hands. Essentia poured out of his channels and flooded the air around him, joining the cyclone of whirling debris. It liquified his skin and hardened it, and it melded into his bones, strengthening them. His muscles bathed in the pale, refined energy, rebuilding themselves, sealing any wounds, and becoming infinitely more responsive to his Essence.

  And, above all, his Essence was more pure. It was stronger, and it shared the innate animal nature of his Reyad.

  When the cyclone subsided, the debris fell to the ground. He stood at the center of a crater, limbs restored, body function restored, and feeling as if he just woke up from a long night’s sleep. Pressure pulsed off his body, and he didn’t bother containing it. Any nearby Dominion soldiers would’ve died from the pressure, but they were still in the abandoned outer ring of the city. There wouldn’t be too many casualties.

  He hadn’t gained any more Essence, though. He only had a sliver of pure Essence, and a quarter of his total gnatsnapper Essence capacity.

  But Lord Three had to be running low, too. He’d used technique after technique.

  Pirin glanced at Gray, then back at the Unbound Lord. “Let’s see what this new form can do.”

  Gray chirped affirmatively.

  In the process of advancing, Pirin had deactivated his predictive model of Lord Three, but he resumed the technique, kicking it back into action and relying on Gray’s sight while he reformed the model of Lord Three in his head.

  “You can advance, boy, but you lack experience,” Lord Three said, walking across the plaza toward Pirin. “You lack skill, and you lack the Essence base! And at the end of it all, you’re still an unstable Embercore.”

  But Pirin still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Lord Three didn’t know about Pirin’s predictive ability. No one did.

  As soon as the model finished, he grinned.

  It was time to end this fight.